


Olive branch

by TerresDeBrume



Series: The Adventures of Booker and Bâtard [2]
Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Booker needs a hug, Booker needs therapy, Gen, Nile Freeman (Mentioned) - Freeform, POV Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Pets, Resentment, Tortoise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:34:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25567531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TerresDeBrume/pseuds/TerresDeBrume
Summary: Nicky still has a beef with Booker, but that doesn't have to extend to his weird pet.
Relationships: Booker | Sebastien Le Livre & Bâtard the tortoise (The Old Guard), Booker | Sebastien le Livre & Nicky | Nicolo di Genova
Series: The Adventures of Booker and Bâtard [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1851265
Comments: 49
Kudos: 222





	Olive branch

**Author's Note:**

> Bâtard the therapy pet turtle strikes again! You can come talk about him with us on [The Discord](https://discord.gg/kDJpjxx) if you'd like ;)
> 
> I tried to write this so that you can guess the meaning of the French when it's useful to understand immediately, but just in case you can also access the translations in the end notes, linked for your convenience :3

Booker ends up coming back early. Very, very early. Nicky can understand that—the whole business with Quyhn was bad enough that they couldn’t have dealt with it without Booker’s help, and there were another couple of missions after that and...well, long story short, Booker comes back before his first decade is even up.

Andy listens to their protests, calmly shoots them all down and, when Joe starts yelling, she pulls the Leader card for the first time in their long existence with a final: “We’ve already established we don’t know how to work without him. Make your peace with it.” It is also the first time since knowing her that Nicky feels like telling her to piss off. He doesn’t, and in the long run he’s glad that he doesn’t, but God. Does he want to, in the moment.

She’s right, is the rub. Nile has grown as good as Booker with electronics over the last decade, but she still doesn’t know how to think like a criminal, which they need to do if they want to keep Copley’s work manageable. The guy is getting on in age, after all. So, Andy is right, and they do need Booker, and Nicky hates it. He doesn’t shout about it—merely inclines his head in Joe’s direction when he does the shouting—and he doesn’t exactly try to work things out. For the most part, he does what he’s done the past nine years: pretend Booker doesn’t exist until he’s got no other choice.

  
  


Booker, however, makes that difficult, sometimes. On the second night, Nicky wakes up with his head full of Jerusalem again, Joe’s blood on his hands turning into Andy’s, into Quynh's, into Nile’s. It’s the kind of night he knows better to fight by now, so he walks out of his and Joe’s room to the kitchen, hoping a good chamomile tea will at least ease the tension in his shoulder, and freezes when he finds Booker seated at the table, looking down at… a turtle. Tortoise? Nicky can never keep track of that one. It’s one of those that walk on land, at any rate. It’s light brown, almost golden, and it’s encased in a crocheted red-and-white mushroom cap, happily munching on what appears to be a strawberry.

Booker is smiling down at the turtle—Nicky’s pretty sure the turtle is the one on land—and occasionally rubs his forefinger over its head. Then he must hear something, or think of something: he raises his head and frowns, shrinking down on himself. It’s hard to tell in the low light, but Nicky’s pretty sure he’s blushing.

“Sorry,” he says, immediately taking his eyes away from Nicky’s, “I can—”

Nicky turns around before Booker can finish his sentence, and goes back to his room without even attempting to get his tea. He thinks he hears Booker say something behind him—but not to him—but he doesn’t stop, and he doesn’t turn back.

  
  


Over the next two weeks, which they spend getting used to one another again in one of their older safehouses, Nicky sees the tortoise (not turtle): devouring lettuce on the sofa while Booker watches a documentary about the Galapagos, standing under the shower spray and looking pretty blissed out, walking the length of the kitchen table while Booker works on his laptop. Nicky also sees it: dressed as a shark, dressed as an orange dinosaur, dressed as a purple dinosaur, and dressed as a big daisy.

The tortoise becomes even more inescapable than Booker. The worst part is, Nicky has to admit he’s not doing it on purpose. Whenever it comes a little too close to one of them, Booker will rush in, take it in his arms and take it away with an apologetic grimace that makes Nicky want to tell him he’s not about to kick an animal, thank you very much. Anyway, the point is: they steer clear of the tortoise, Booker doesn’t say anything about it—he doesn’t say much about anything, but as far as Nicky is concerned it’s just as well—and Nicky continues to talk to the man as little as possible, letting Nile and Andy handle as many tense conversations as they can have.

  
  


In the fourth week, Nile asks Booker about the tortoise. Nicky, who is cooking dinner as they talk in the living room, learns that the animal’s name is Bâtard Lent [1]—“Bâtard for short.”—that Booker has a lot of pictures of him in reserve, and that Nile thinks reptiles are cute. If you ask Nicky, tortoises mostly look like little mummies with beady eyes, but since that’s not his pet and he’s not talking to Booker, he keeps that to himself. Besides, every moment Booker spends fussing over the tortoise—and he does fuss quite a lot, no matter how quiet he keeps it—is a moment Nicky doesn’t have to worry about him trying to strike up a conversation, whether to apologize or anything else.

(Although, in the spirit of fairness, Nicky has to reluctantly admit that at least Booker seems to know better than to do that. Also, he drinks less, these days. It’s probably best for him, but that still doesn’t mean Nicky wants to actually talk to the man.)

  
  


On the third day of week five, Nicky and Joe wake up to the sound of Booker furiously whispering in the corridor outside their room, cursing in French when he bangs against the forgotten gear in the darkness. A glance at the alarm clock next to their bed tells them it’s four in the morning, and Joe falls back down on the bed with a groan and some very unflattering words in Arabic, while Nicky puts a T-shirt on and goes to open the door.

“Ah put—Nicky, you scared me,”[2] Booker hisses. It’s good that he’s at least trying to be quiet. “I’m sorry I woke you guys up, I can’t find Bâtard and I didn’t want to—”

It takes Nicky a few seconds too long to remember that Bâtard is the Tortoise’s name. It sounds suspiciously close to ‘Bastardo’, but frankly Booker can call his pet ‘anus’ if he wants to. It’s not Nicky’s problem. What is his problem, on the other hand, is whether or not Joe can get some sleep, and if Booker’s increasing sense of franticness is any indication, that might not be the case in five minutes.

(Before, Nicky would have said Booker knew better than to stay noisy for too long, but Booker wouldn’t have been up searching for anything but a bottle of booze back then, and they don’t keep those in the bedrooms.)

“Turn the light on,” Nicky says, short and to the point enough that there won’t be any illusion of returned camaraderie, “it’ll go faster.”

“Right,” Booker says, going for the switch with a diligence Nicky has never witnessed from him, not even for Andy. As he continues to walk toward the kitchen, he hears Booker call out in a whisper:  “Bâtard! Viens ici, espèce de saloperie!”[3]

He doesn’t understand the words beyond a strong suspicion that they’re rude, but he does hear the worry creeping in Booker’s tone and, without turning around, raises his eyebrows. It’s stupid, but he’d never have suspected any of them to be the pet type let alone Booker. It is...not a kind thought to have, he knows, and perhaps he will regret it in the morning, but right now he is angry with Booker for far more than being woken up before dawn, and so he refuses to regret his thoughts.

Nicky steps into the kitchen feeling far more awake than he should, ready to head straight for the teakettle in the dark, when his bare foot comes into contact with something that is definitely not tiling. It’s dome shaped, for one, and not cold to the touch. With a sigh, Nicky closes his eyes and asks the Lord for patience, then goes to turn the lights on...and, sure enough, finds the tortoise—Bâtard—there. It’s naked, so to speak, no trace of wool on it, and it looks around the kitchen with its beady little eyes that don’t have a soul behind them.

“What does he see in you?” Nicky asks the tortoise as he walks around it to get the kettle and fill it with water.

He keeps an eye on it while he retrieves his teabag and the honey and, on impulse, tears a leaf from the lettuce Booker keeps on the top shelf for it. He puts it down before he retrieves his tea and sits down to drink it. The tortoise munches on its lettuce with big chomps that aren’t terrible to watch, but that’s the extent of its interaction with the world, and Nicky doesn’t get it. A pet, he supposes he can see. It isn’t a practical choice in their line of work, but Booker was technically supposed to be benched for another ninety years: it makes sense for him to look for company… but why a tortoise, of all animals?

“I don’t get it,” he tells the tortoise again. “You act like nothing exists, you look like you don't care about anything, and you’re smaller than a football. I have no idea what he sees in you.”

He really, really doesn’t. But… Nicky thinks of the crocheted coverings he sees on the animal more often than not. He thinks of the way Booker was smiling that night in the kitchen, in a way he'd never seen on him. He thinks of Nile saying “oh, that one’s cute too” at least four times, after she’d run out of questions to ask before Booker ran out of pictures.

He puts his mug and spoon away, trashes the used teabag, and scoops the tortoise from the floor.

  
  


Booker is still exploring the corridor when Nicky crosses into it, meticulously taking every object left lying on the left side to put them on the right and, more likely than not, preparing to reverse the process once done. There’s enough stuff there that he could be at it a while before he got to the other rooms. With a sigh, Nicky walks up to the man, taps him on the shoulder, and plops the tortoise in his hand.

“Bâtard!” Booker exclaims, ten—metaphorical—years sliding off his face just like that. "Thanks, Nicky,” he adds.

He’s pressed the tortoise to his chest, its legs waving in the air like it doesn’t know there’s no ground to walk on anymore, and Nicky is once again reminded that he doesn’t see how anyone could pick a tortoise as a pet. Still, he nods, and turns his eyes away before Booker’s smile can go from relieved to something else that Nicky doesn’t want to see.

“Go to sleep,” he says at last, and is surprised when Booker nods, turns on his heels and walks away with a murmur of “mais ça va pas d’me faire des peurs pareilles?”[4] that Nicky is curious enough about to try and translate tomorrow.

In the meantime, he walks back into his bedroom, where Joe half-wakes up as soon as he sets one knee on the bed. He yawns, and asks in Arabic:

“What was he doing?”

“Worrying,” Nicky responds in the same language as he slips under the covers again. They’re toasty warm, and the weight of Joe's arm over his waist does a great job at pulling him to the edge of sleep in an instant.

“About the tortoise?”

Nicky shrugs, too tired to bother with words. Joe snorts, then hums.

“Guess it’s better than plotting another betrayal.”

Nicky should probably chide him for that—Andy was right when she said they didn’t know how to work properly in this world without Booker—but it’s very late and he’s tired so he just leans a little harder against Joe’s chest and goes to sleep.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, comments and reviews make me want to keep writing :D
> 
> **Translations:**  
> 1 Slow Bastard [up]  
> 2 Ah fu— [up]  
> 3 Bastard! Come here, you ass! [up]  
> 4 What's wrong with you, scaring me like that? [up]


End file.
